


7.08: A Shadow of Horror

by idlesuperstar



Series: The Crooked Roads [9]
Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 02:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18202049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesuperstar/pseuds/idlesuperstar
Summary: It’s fitting, in a way, that it’s the Russians who will end it. He wonders if Oleg will hear of it. Hysteria bubbles up inside him. He could ask them to pass on his last words.





	7.08: A Shadow of Horror

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sidelong look at ep 7:08 from Lucas' brainpan. If you've not seen the ep then it won't make much sense. Go and watch that instead. 
> 
> Title from William Blake's [ _The Book Of Urizen_](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-book-of-urizen-excerpts). Intertitles are Proverbs of Hell from Blake's [ _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_](http://www.bartleby.com/235/253.html).
> 
> Series notes are [here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/136827).

Ros meets him at the airport.

_Shit._

This is not a good sign.

“Harry?” he asks, warily. Ros, even more closed off than usual, mutely shakes her head. He follows her to the car in silence, stomach falling. No, it can’t be Harry, Ros would be holding the fort on the grid if something had happened to Harry.

Ros puts the key in the ignition but doesn’t turn it. Christ, it’s bad news, whatever it is.

“You got the message about Connie?” he asks, finally, when she’s clearly not going to move. A sound escapes her, half laugh, half sob; awful in its bitterness.

“We got the message,” she says, flatly. Her knuckles are tight white on the steering wheel. “We got the message,” and Lucas has never heard that tone in her voice before, “when we found Ben with his throat cut and Records swimming in blood.” She twists the key in the ignition brutally and reverses the car with a squeal of tires.

 

After the initial blast of shock and nausea, his first, selfish thought is _was it my fault?_

“I phoned him,” he finally manages to say, mouth dry. The grey outskirts of London fly past in a blur. He can’t look at Ros.

“I phoned him and told him Connie was the mole. I couldn’t get Harry or you.” He doesn’t know what he’s trying for, absolution or blame. “I _spoke_ to her earlier,” he says, awareness dawning, “she realised I was in Moscow. _She_ alerted the FSB. _Shit.”_

“Shit, indeed,” Ros says, with a trace of her usual dryness.

“Did you get her?”

“Oh yeah, we got her,” Ros says, and Lucas wonders if Connie knows exactly how much shit she’s in now.

 

He grips the microfilm in his pocket, a talisman against chaos. He needs to focus.

He’s got Moscow and Connie and betrayal and Ben and Maria and Lubyanka and Oleg and blood and torture screaming round his brain and he needs to wipe it all out and focus on the bigger picture.

If it wasn’t so terrifying it would be laughable that there _is_ a bigger picture than all that.

 

He stares out of the window, lets his eyes lose focus, and finds a place.

The cold metal of the water tower at Tilbury. The bleak, impersonal wind off the water. The empty grey sky, the distant cries of grebe and bittern.

The smallness of himself, and the vastness of the landscape.

He feels it settle.

 

~

 

The jerk of the handbrake brings him back to reality. Ros switches the engine off and looks at him, hard and level.

“You’re going to be alright for this?” she says, but it’s not a question, really. It’s more of an order.

“Let’s get this microfilm looked at,” he says, calmly, “and see what the next shitstorm’s going to be.”

 

~

 

Lucas takes it to Harry.

“We have a serious problem.”

_Tiresias._

 

* * *

 

It feels like years ago that Harry told him and Ros about Sugarhorse. It was barely two weeks.

Sometimes Lucas thinks he’s getting a year’s worth of intel every month, to make up for the eight years he got no information. He wonders idly if he should be having a breakdown.

 

“For perhaps twenty five years,” Harry is saying to the team, in his most deliberate tone, “the Kremlin has had a network of sleepers, high level assets in place throughout the United Kingdom. The Russians call this operation _Tiresias.”_

Lucas looks at the team, the _surviving_ team, sombre and weary and heartsore and yet still here, and thinks, _you did this, Connie, and you will live to regret it._

“Everything we ever did, everything we gave,” he says, the bitterness spilling over, “this was waiting for us.”

“ _Tiresias wakes at 3pm today,_ ” Ros reads, evenly.

  


* * *

 

Once the briefing is over, Lucas leaves Ros and Harry to discuss their fake kidnap plans, and heads down to the lower levels to get cleaned up. He feels grimy and sticky, gritty-eyed.

He gets a change of clothes from his locker. Ben’s locker is the next one along, his name scrawled messily on an address label stuck neatly in the middle of the door, layered over remnants of previous stickers.

Lucas rubs a finger over a corner of an old label. It’s smooth to the touch, worn down by the years.

He turns away abruptly, strides towards the shower room. He can’t afford any of this.

 

The shower is powerful, gloriously hot. He lets it beat down on his shoulders for a while, lets his arms fall loose, deliberately slackens his muscles.

He closes his eyes, concentrates on his breath. Gives himself these few minutes, feels nothing but the heat of the water on his skin and the weight of the air in his lungs.

 

Eventually he lifts his head, opens his eyes, and comes back to himself. He washes unhurriedly but efficiently, sluicing away the grime and stale sweat, washing the last day off himself. The girl’s perfume, the FSB thug’s sweat, the stale aeroplane air and his own jagged adrenaline.

 

He’s grateful for the solitude as he dries and dresses. Even here there would be sidelong glances, eyes pricking along his tattoos. He glances at himself in the mirror as he pulls his jeans on, still shirtless, and flashes back suddenly to that first evening.

To how he’d washed at the sink, standing naked and hunched, unable to face the showers.

To his own hands, shaking. The scratch of unfamiliar clothing, the bright glare of the tiles.

To Harry’s unhappy face. The unbearable weight of his gaze. His _pity._

 

He scrubs a towel over his hair, pulls on his top. He hadn’t even thought about being unable to face a shower. He’d just wanted to get clean, and have a moment of quiet.

Progress, he thinks, wryly.

 

* * *

_The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure._

 

Connie, naturally, knows all about the legend of Tiresias. She could be taking a seminar rather than sitting tied to a chair in a grimy warehouse. Lucas watches, silent, clenching his jaw to stop himself speaking. Harry is visibly frustrated enough for all of them.

Connie sits, steely and aloof, holding all the cards.

Lucas would happily sit and watch her slowly rot, days and weeks and months of it, clutching her secrets until her grip failed and they spilled to the floor but they have _no time._

“I spent eight years in a Russian cell,” he says to her, voice low, close enough to hear her breathing. “Eight years because I stayed loyal to my country. I still chew it over when I’m lying awake at three AM wondering was it worth it.”

He fancies he can feel the weight of Harry’s guilt like a physical thing. His voice cracks, but he keeps on, forcing the words past his closed-up throat. “But yeah. It was. Because I look at you, with all your brilliance, and all your treachery, and I see everything I’ve ever fought against.”

He crouches down to look into her eyes, icy and unwavering. He sees no soul there. But she is, in the end, only human. That’s the worst of it. He turns away, unable to look at her any longer.

The silence lasts unbearable moments.

And then,

“Have you checked the number stations?”

 

~

 

After what feels like an hour, Malcolm has something for them.

“What is,” Harry asks, voice deliberately even, “ _Rain From Heaven_?”

Connie’s deliberate lack of reaction is so strong it’s like a blow. Lucas’ stomach drops.

Her reply, though, is to rattle off her demands. Harry - Harry who has knows Connie for thirty-odd years and can probably read her better than anyone - agrees to everything with the air of a man who has been asked for nothing important. Lucas’ stomach drops further.

“ _Rain From Heaven_ ” says Connie flatly, as if she’s not just told them there are _portable nuclear bombs stashed around the country by the Soviets_ “is the go code for a nuclear attack on London.”

 

Lucas thinks time shuts down for a moment.

 

He’d been given too much morphine once in A&E, had actually felt it move round his body, through his bloodstream, icy cold. And then an uncontrollable feeling of _too much_ , like being too stoned or too drunk, wanting it to stop, wanting sober normality to come back.

 

This feels ten times worse. This is his childhood terrors come true. This is being the only kid at school who couldn’t stand to watch _Threads._ This is the immobilising fear of seeing _Protect and Survive_ films, of all his boyhood nightmares. He thinks he might throw up.

Connie’s steady voice suddenly cuts through the noise in his head.

“We have till 3pm.”

Everything goes cold and clear. Time snaps back.

And Connie said _we._ So she is as scared as they are. She’s bargaining for her life. But C _hrist_ , she’s good.

 

 _So all we need to do_ , thinks Lucas, _is get her out of a safehouse that’s been blown, cross London to her dead drop for the Tiresias dossier, get to the bomb and disable it, all while avoiding FSB agents desperate to pick her up. And kill us. All before 3pm. Without worrying the public._

 

 _Well,_ he muses, _it’s not like I’ve been up for 30 hours, been to Moscow and back, left dead bodies in my wake, had a colleague murdered and been told I’m about to live my lifelong nightmare._

 

“Tick. Tick. Tick.” says Connie.

 

* * *

 

It’s probably adrenaline but on the street he feels like he’s speeding. Everything is crystal clear, heightened, pin-sharp. The clack clack clack of Ros’ heels as she herds Connie down the pavement. The yellow of a worker’s hi-vis jacket. He feels like he can see beneath the skin of things. It’s like the world has slowed down.

He glances at the man across the street on his phone. Who is _speaking Russian._

The gunfire is deafening in the narrow street.

He’s glad he’s kept up with his shooting practice. Even if he was using it as a stress reliever.

Malcolm gets them a way out of there, but it’s a temporary reprieve. Lucas is flicking through options and strategies as he runs down another alleyway. They need to run this like the priority op it is. Harry needs to be back at the grid, omniscient, moving his players around the board.

“Watch the rooftops,” Harry says. Lucas grins. He has another route entirely in mind.

 

~

 

The third car he finds is the lucky one. A well prepared owner. Stashed in the boot there’s a torch, a first aid kit, tools. He crams everything useful into a rucksack, eyes on the skyline all the time.

After a very long two minutes he catches up with Ros and Connie.

Ros looks like she’s five seconds away from putting a bullet through Connie’s skull. When this is over, Lucas will gladly load the gun for her.

They walk out onto Bishopsgate. Lucas scans the crowds of pedestrians constantly, alert for a knife or any other weapon. They just need to cross to the station.

He stumbles sideways, feeling like he’s been punched, but there’s no-one close enough.

And then the pain sears his side and he instinctively puts his hand over it, not letting his stride falter. The pain burns, broad and hot, and then he feels the wetness spreading on his shirt.

Sniper. The rooftops. Harry was right.

He pushes hard on the pain, and follows Ros and Connie into the sanctuary of Liverpool Street.

 

~

 

He takes point, eyes flicking everywhere, trusting that Ros is keeping Connie in check.

Spots the door over to the side, the one plastered in Keep Out and Danger signs.

A fire extinguisher makes short work of the lock. He pulls the door closed behind them, bloody fingers slippery on the handle.

“London’s riddled with disused tunnels,” he tells them, the clatter of their feet loud in the dimly lit stairs. “We can use them to get to London Bridge undetected.”

But just to be sure he takes a moment to barricade the gate behind them. He’s glad he nicked those jump leads.

The FSB are not going to let Connie go without a fight. That they don’t know she’s the best chance of avoiding nuclear annihilation is just shitty luck.

 

~

 

“How bad is it?” Ros asks, unceremoniously pulling his jacket open.

“Missed all the important stuff, I’ll live.”

“Don’t speak too soon,” she says, and starts off down the tunnel.

Getting off the platform onto the tracks is fucking excruciating.

He breathes through his teeth, focuses on the uneven ground, on putting one foot in front of the other.

 

They come upon an abandoned tube train after a while because _of course_ this has to be like every horror film ever set on the underground.

Ros takes point through the carriages, and Lucas bites back the hysterical urge to chant _mind the doors_ as they stumble through the dark.

He thinks his heart actually stops when the bag lady yells at Ros. _Christ._

Still, at least she’s not a werewolf.

 

He takes a moment to get his breathing under control, scans the map of disused tube tunnels in his head, concentrates on drawing a route.

The pain recedes momentarily.

He’s always been good at this. He’s even better now, after months, years of training himself in his cell.

The picture is pin sharp, the way obvious.

He hopes it’s enough of an advantage to outpace the Russians. With Connie flagging and himself at nowhere near full capacity, they’ll need every minute he can find for them.

 

~

 

The service tunnel is better lit, easier underfoot.

It feels interminable.

The pain is excruciating, pulsing out in white hot throbs from his stomach. His back is wet but it’s only sweat, slippy and thin, not the tell-tale stickiness of blood. No exit wound. He imagines the bullet scraping around inside him, working deeper with every thudding step he takes.

Thanks to Lubyanka, thanks to the FSB, thanks to _Oleg_ , he has spent too much time enduring the unendurable. He knows this is bearable. He knows he has hours before the blood loss impacts his stamina to the point of incapacity. He knows he can go another day without sleep and still be functional. He’s learnt all these things, in training, and in reality.

Doesn’t stop him wanting to fall to the grimy floor and whimper.

 

_A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees._

 

Connie stumbles, panting, and wordlessly, he and Ros decide on a breather.

“You’re not going to make it,” Connie says, because she’ll never miss a chance to needle the fuck out of Ros.

Lucas tunes them out, fumbles a dressing out of its package with bloody fingers. He uses half the roll of tape trying to stick it to his stomach, slippy with blood and sweat. Nausea rolls through him as he presses the tape down. He can’t throw up, the pain would be fucking unbelievable. His vision goes starry for a moment.

Ros and Connie are spitting insults now. Christ. They’d be at each other’s throats if they had the energy to spare. He’s got no time for Connie’s rewriting of history with herself as heroine and martyr. 

“Whatever you think you’ve done for this country is gone. What’s lost can never be found,” he says flatly, stuffing everything back into the rucksack.

The crack of a gunshot is shocking in the taut silence.

“What would you do if you were them?” Lucas asks, knowing the answer, knowing Ros and he are thinking as one.

“Send in a runner,” she says, grimly, dragging Connie to her feet.

 

Lucas fancies he hears the runner behind them, even though he knows he can’t, over the sound of their own thudding feet. It’s like a countdown, like the ticking of the bomb that is out there somewhere.

Wordlessly, he hands the torch to Ros, lets her take the lead, scans the tunnel for an anchor point. 

He waits. Listens, over the noise of his unsteady breathing, over the pounding of his pulse, over the disappearing steps of Ros and Connie. Listens for the runner.

When he yanks the cord tight across the tunnel, across the runner's windpipe, he almost blacks out from the pain.

He takes one breath, two, three, just to steady his aim, even though he won’t miss a headshot at this close range.

The shot reverberates through the tunnel, almost deafening.

 

He catches up with Ros and Connie, sees Ros quickly smooth her features into blankness.

“Service tunnels will take you to the surface that way,” he says, aware how short his breath is, how hard it is to keep his voice steady. He gestures with the Beretta, “I’ll draw them off to the platform.”

 

It’s all too easy to leave a trail of blood for the Russians to follow. He smears a handprint along the wall, hoping they don’t see it for the decoy it is.

His legs feel like they don’t belong to him, like he’s dragging dead meat. He tries to calculate how much time he has before the blood loss becomes critical, but he’s too fuzzy to think straight.

He gulps air in, his throat raw, can’t stop himself making noises, groaning.

He wants to lie down and never get up again. Wants an armful of heroin. Wants oblivion, and no pain.

 _And that’s what you’ll get if you stop now_ , he tells himself, _you and ten thousand other Londoners._ Instant oblivion. No more pain.

He’s not sure how he ever gets up the escalator. Desperation, and fear, probably.

It gives him a vantage point to shoot from, if only he could hold the gun steady. Christ, there’s fucking _six_ of them.

“I don’t want to shoot!” he yells in Russian. Who the fuck will believe him, though.

On the second shot his gun jams. Because this is the kind of day it is.

He makes it to the exit, but the gates are locked. He can’t even shoot the lock off. So this is it, then.

He turns round, slowly, gun arm still raised, watching them advance, inexorable. They want Connie. He’s just a means to an end. But he’s not going to make it easy.

“One more step and I shoot,” he says, trying to sound convincing.

“Your gun’s jammed,” says the guy at the front, mildly.

 

All his strength goes suddenly. His arm falls, his head drops, too heavy. So this really is it.

It’s fitting, in a way, that it’s the Russians who will end it. He wonders if Oleg will hear of it. Hysteria bubbles up inside him. He could ask them to pass on his last words.

But then, what would they be?

_I’m sorry?_

_I forgive you?_

_Will you miss me?_

_I love you?_

He tries to think of a line of poetry, but the words are slippery in his brain, elusive, intangible.

He can only think of the vast bleak expanse of the wetlands where they walked, of the creases around Oleg’s eyes as he scrunched them up against the cold wind.

He braces himself for the shot.

 

Impossibly, a phone rings.

Through the blood in his ears, he hears the crackle of the voice on the other end. Then -

“It’s your lucky day,” drawls the guy in front, in English.

 _You can’t faint now_ , Lucas tells himself, _that would be undignified._

 

~

 

He doesn’t know how long it takes them to get to London Bridge. Time seems to dilate. The adrenaline from almost dying takes the edge off the pain for most of it.

He’s in the worst shape but takes point, following the still sharp route in his mind’s eye.

Ros is typically sarky when he turns up with six FSB agents ready to help.

But Connie’s got the goods. All the sleeper agents in London. They finally know where the bomb is.

“Bring it to me,” Connie says “the squad will never get there in time”.

Lucas shares a look with Ros.

Here’s when they make a decision that could cost the entire city. It’s a bit more than putting a bomb in a microwave.

But this is their strength.

He turns to the Russian agent. “Do you have anyone in Grosvenor Square?”

“The American Embassy? We practically live there.”

 

“I need a working light, and a toolkit,” says Connie. “And a bottle of gin.”

 

~

 

The waiting is excruciating.

 

And then he’s carrying a fucking _portable nuclear bomb_ down a disused tube corridor. His hands are slippery with blood and sweat and the fear is almost crippling. He is living his childhood nightmares.

“You should both leave,” Connie says, thumbs poised over the suitcase catches. Neither of them move.

Connie snips a wire with deft hands. Silence.

And then beeping.

 

“Connie?” His mouth is so dry he can barely articulate.

When she speaks, it’s as if she’s presenting a demonstration to students. Her voice is clear and precise. Only the shake in it gives her away.

“The conventional explosive will go off in less than two minutes. If I haven’t removed the uranium, it will cause a chain reaction, and a nuclear explosion.”

Even if she removes the uranium, the normal bomb will still kill her. And them, if they don’t go.

No-one moves.

 

Connie is in her own world now. A barrier has come down between them. She’s as closed off as she ever was, impenetrable. This could be her redemption, or her final fuck you. It’s impossible to know. They are ants, to her. Specks on the ground. Would she ever care if they stopped moving?

Lucas is suddenly tired of her. He nods minutely at Ros, stumbles to his feet, turning his back on Connie James and all her kind.

 

“Oh - Lucas?”

He staggers to a halt, hating that she still has the power to reel him in.

“Three AM when you can’t sleep, and the nightmares come, who do you blame for what happened to you?” Her voice is light, conversational, even with the quiver in it. “Eight years in a Russian hell, who d’you blame?”

And Lucas, as if she’s spellbound him, says, _finally_ , to the outward air -

“I blame Harry.”

 

“Well it’s time to let it go, it wasn’t Harry.”

And is it her last twist of the knife, or is it truth?

Is he howling his soul out just for her delight?

“Ten seconds,” she says. “Nine.” Ros is yelling at him, trying to drag him away.

“ _Just say it!”_ he roars, and he has survived so much, so _fucking_ much, but this, _this_ will be the thing that breaks him.

“It was me,” she says, on a breath. “It was me.”

He has never run so fast in his fucking life.

 

~

 

As the dust settles, he lifts his head to look at Ros. She holds his gaze, breathes out heavily.

 

~

 

The Russians are still there, when they get to ground level.

The lead guy nods to Lucas, silent, his eyes wet. They turn and leave.

Lucas drops his head, fighting the tears that are welling up.

 

“You okay?” Ros asks in a voice that says _dear god let’s not talk about feelings._

Lucas nods almost automatically, shaking hand over his mouth. “They’ll never know,” he grits out, throat clogged with tears.

“And that’s a good thing, Lucas, you know it is,” says Ros, and she’s right. She knows they’d both - whatever the cost - rather be the protectors than the protected. They’re both useless at having no control.

“I need to speak to Harry,” Lucas blurts, and the phone is shaking in his hand. He needs to say - what?

_Sorry I thought you betrayed me?_

_Have I finally done enough?_

_I just helped to save London from a nuclear winter, are you going to say thank you?_

_I’m not sorry she’s dead?_

_I wanted her to suffer more?_

The phone rings out, so he doesn’t have to decide.

Why the _fuck_ isn’t Harry answering his phone?

Ros’ gaze is laser-bright. He sees her shake everything off, straighten up.

 

“You,” she says, in her flattest tone, “need a doctor.”

“I can do it later, we need to see what’s happened to Harry.”

“ _Lucas_ ,” Ros bites out, and he’s not heard that tone since that first debrief with her and Harry. That time she looked like she wanted to string him up herself.

“This is _not_ the time for you to act like a maverick. _Don’t_ make me slap an insubordination charge on you.”

Lucas watches her face until it softens a little, and she quirks an exasperated smile.

“Lucas, you’ve been fucking _shot._ Get yourself to A&E, - get a _cab_ for fuck’s sake - get some good drugs and get stitched up. Flash your ID and get fast tracked.” She holds a hand up to his protest, “You just stopped a fucking nuclear bomb going off and killing thousands of people, don’t come the noble socialist martyr with me, just for _once._ And go _home_ and get some _sleep_ and don’t come in until the morning.”  

He opens his mouth to argue with her, even though he’s going faint again and can’t stop shaking.

She rubs a hand over her face in exhaustion.

“Lucas,” she says more quietly. “I need to think about Harry. I can’t be watching for you to keel over. I can’t afford to split my focus.” She sighs out a breath. “Please.”

Lucas sags. Fuck. He nods, defeated.

“Don’t worry,” Ros says over her shoulder, as she walk away briskly. “I won’t tell a soul.”

 

* * *

 

He walks to St Thomas’.

Ros would think it yet more bloody-mindedness, but in truth he can’t face sitting in a cab, trapped in traffic. Despite the pain, despite the dragging weight of his legs, he’s too restless, his mind spiralling out, nerve endings sparking.

 

He feels scraped raw, gritty and dessicated with exhaustion, strung out and hypersensitive. Like he’s coming down off bad speed, fever-dreaming, grimy and sweaty. His pulse stabs relentlessly behind his eyes.

He walks.

Focuses on his feet hitting the pavement. On the feel of the blood caked under his fingernails. On the stiffness of the bandage on his stomach.

 

Some sixth sense keeps him from bumping into people. The streets are crowded, noisy. He moves through them without noticing.

 

* * *

 

There’s a strange peace in offering himself up to the care of the hospital staff, giving in, following orders. He doesn’t have to think. He doesn’t have to make any decisions.

Which is lucky because he seems to have lost the capacity for coherent thought.

 

“It’s alway bullet wounds with you lot,” says the doctor stitching him up. He’s terrifyingly young, and Lucas wonders if he’s been awake since yesterday like he has.

“Sorry,” Lucas says, for some reason.

“More bloody flash Bond stuff, I suppose?”

The urge to tell him is completely overwhelming. He can feel the words physically straining to get out. He swallows them down, grits his teeth to keep them inside.

He feels the tugs of the needle and thread like distant pinpricks.

“Oh you know,” he finally manages, keeping his voice dry, “just saving the world again.”

“What _would_ we do without you?” the doctor grins, fastening off the thread.

“What would _we_ do without _you?_ ” Lucas replies, and is embarrassed at how sincere it sounds. He sits up gingerly, reaches for his blood-soaked shirt, feels the pull of the skin across his stomach.

“Do you want morphine?”

“Not really.”

The doc helps him with his shirt soundlessly, his touch blessedly impersonal. He is brisk, silent, much as he was helping Lucas off with it. He didn’t comment on the tattoos. Lucas could have kissed him for that.

“I’m giving you codeine, usual routine, I’m sure you know it.”

“Yeah.”

There’s enough evidence on Lucas’ torso alone to show how very much he knows the routine, and this quick, sarcastic man will have missed none of it.

“You need to eat and drink something as well, soon as. Plenty of sugar. I’m sure you’ll find many delights in the vending machine.”

Lucas nods. He pulls his coat back on stiffly, tests the feel of his side. It’ll be fine. At least until the local wears off. If he buttons his coat up no-one will be able to tell.

“Right,” says the doctor, with a light touch on his shoulder. “I’m off to the next one. Don’t do it again.”

 

Lucas breathes out carefully and contemplates standing up. Once the local kicked in and dulled the pain from the bullet, he’d become horribly aware of how shit the rest of him felt.

The adrenaline has worn off, since he’s been here. Now he just feels unbearably weary, but so far beyond tiredness that he knows he won’t sleep for hours.

The doctor’s head reappears around the curtain.

“Oh - you might want to have a wash before you go back outside,” he says, with the ghost of a grin and disappears again. Lucas stares blankly after him.

Then he looks down at his hands, bloody and grimed.

Maybe he has a point.

 

~

 

_Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps._

  


He walks the back way out of the hospital, cuts through the gardens and up onto Westminster Bridge.

Tilts the last of the bottle of water into his mouth and leans carefully against the stone, looking over the water.

The late afternoon sun is warm on his face.

And here, as so often before, with people and traffic streaming noisily at his back, in the heart of this teeming, grimy, charter’d city, is stillness.

The vastness of the sky, the never ending flow of the water.

He breathes out shakily, feeling it settle into his bones.

_The river glideth at his own sweet will_

 

He thinks back to the morning - only a few weeks after his return - when he’d walked over the bridge at dawn, holding himself to a promise he’d made in prison. A promise that he’d look out once more over that mighty heart.

He’d stood in much the same spot, shivering in the frosty air, the wind cutting through him like on those freezing walks with Oleg, and - like the horribly pretentious teenager he once was - murmured the whole bloody poem.

And he’d felt the power of it, of the words, of the city, of the river and the sky.

 

He feels this late spring day overlapping that winter one. Almost a palimpsest, an artist’s redrawing of an earlier sketch. Some lines are the same, some are more confident, freer.

He has come through this impossible day, to stand again, on this bridge. This bridge that is still standing, thanks in part to him.

It feels like a story someone has told him, rather than a thing he has lived through.

 

Big Ben’s half hour chimes ring out into the air, familiar and comforting as a heartbeat.

The tears well up again, and this time he lets them tip over.

 

\- The ten to six Shipping Forecast on the old Grundig radio, kitchen windows steamed up from the potatoes boiling on the hob. His mum chiding him to set the table. His dad coming in to sit down just as Big Ben was striking six. Listening to the six o’clock news as they ate their tea.

The ordinary things that make up a life.

He misses it suddenly, misses his parents with a familiar ache. Misses the sound of his dad’s voice, the particular rhythm he’d always use for reading, or for sermons.

Those rare, quiet moments when he’d say _your mum’d be proud of you._

 _Well dad,_ he muses, _I think she’d be proud of me today, overall. -_

 

He looks up at the clock. Half four.

Christ. Is that all. He has lived a lifetime in the last few hours.

He thinks, for perhaps the first time that day, of what comes next.

He could walk along the river, get to Southwark Cathedral in time for Evensong. He feels the need to be wrapped up in the comfort of it, the old familiar cadence of the words, the music.

  


He pushes up off the barrier, feeling the tightness of the skin on his stomach. He turns to look up at the clock tower, gleaming in the sunlight.

It’s not patriotism, or a respect for government, or any obvious notion of Englishness - his relationship with all these things is complex and difficult - but something in the sight will always make his heart glow.

He’s glad that it’s still standing.

 

* * *

 

He pitches into bed at 7pm and sleeps like the dead until he jolts, heart racing, out of a dream where they didn’t make it in time.

Where he’s far enough away to survive the blast.

To see the mushroom cloud of his childhood night terrors, feel the punch of impact, watch helplessly as the skyline fractures, as London falls in slow motion, Big Ben drunkenly crumpling into dust clouds. 

 

He stumbles to the window, wrenches it open, leans out into the cold night air, craning to see, to reassure himself that London is still there. The lights of the city blink on, unconcerned.

He slumps against the sill, heart skittering, clammy with sweat.

_Christ._

 

He tramps through to the kitchen and downs a pint of water, hand shaking. Sticks the kettle on. Checks his phone.

3:23 am. No messages.

 _6:23 am in Moscow_ , his brain automatically fills in.

 

He takes his tea across to the table by the window, where he can keep watch over the city.

It’s quiet, three AM quiet, only the faint whirr of the fridge and the distant echoes of the streets.

He pops two of the hospital strength co-codamol from the pack and downs them with a swig of tea. Presses gingerly on the dressing on his stomach.

 _I don’t suppose you’ll take the recommended week off_ the doctor had said.

Now, in the slow quiet of the witching hour, with the city mostly sleeping, it feels almost a possibility.

He could lie in bed, read the books that are piling up.

He could even drive out to the coast, spend some time by the ocean.

Breathe a little.

 

After a while the codeine kicks in, blurring the edges of the pain, slackening muscles he’d not known he was holding taut. He feels warm, comfortable.

He thinks again of all those Lubyanka sessions. How Oleg would push him just beyond what he thought he could endure, hold him there on the knife edge, and then - stop.

How the sudden lack of pain was heady as an opiate.

How Oleg was, in those aftermaths. Warm, confiding. His big hands, safe and capable. The protective bulk of him. Coaxing, gentle.

 

He shudders a breath out.

He sits in the peaceful heart of his city and aches with the wanting of it.

It’s a familiar ache now, steady and constant. Not the tearing, jagged pain it once was. He’s no longer running the midnight streets to try to escape it. It’s a part of him, he knows that now. Something to carry with him.

These last days will eventually become the same. Something to carry with him. If he lets the tide wash over him it will ebb eventually.

It’s a realisation hard won.

 

He finishes his tea. The pain is muted, bearable. He’s fuzzy round the edges. He’ll sleep again now.

Tomorrow will bring what it will.

 

* * *

  


 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [jennytheshipper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper/pseuds/Jennytheshipper) cast her beady eyes over this as usual. She is the best of cheerleaders and collaborators in all things spy. 
> 
> This is one of my favourite eps of all the Lucas ones, (the tube! abandoned tube tunnels! Lucas being extra badass and also dirty and bleeding!) even while it's also probably the scariest one for me (I share Lucas' childhood nightmares).
> 
> Some of the London Underground/film references that Lucas makes are the well-known [ _An American Werewolf In London_](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082010/) and the much less well know but equally awesome [ _Death Line_](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068458/) (I totally rec that film, even if it is a bit gruesome, it's also funny and sort of sad? Plus, career-best Donald Pleasence.)
> 
> Lucas also allusively likens Connie to Harry Lime, because that's how Lucas' mind works.
> 
> If you start from Liverpool Street Station and need to get to London Bridge Station, you in no way go via Charing Cross, even if you're using super cool spy routes/abandoned tube tunnels. It's ok, Spooks writers, we don't _really_ mind. What is research anyway?
> 
> *
> 
> I'd also like to say - I know this series gets updated more slowly than glaciers move, but I am SO chuffed that people are (still) reading it. It _will_ get completed. I actually have a couple of WIPs that are post episode 8.04 fics, because I'm gonna give Lucas a better future even if it kills me. 
> 
> *


End file.
